


The Eastbourne Ultimatum

by oxymoronic



Series: The Eastbourne Supremacy [1]
Category: The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: Backstory, Elections, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, One Shot, Origin Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-08
Updated: 2013-11-08
Packaged: 2017-12-31 19:45:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1035662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oxymoronic/pseuds/oxymoronic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fergus Williams is a down-and-out unelectable Lib Dem MP attempting to conquer the Tory safeseat of Eastbourne, South Sussex; cue Adam Kenyon, hired on a whim to lead an election campaign that's just the right side of hopeless and - if they're exceptionally bloody lucky - just might work.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hand on heart, promise I didn't think this'd end up as 16k when I started writing it a month and a half ago. Thank you so much to all the patient, sighing support I've had from the _TTOI_ guys on Tumblr (special mentions to shinobi93 and jackmarlowe for being such exceptionally good bullies); you fuckers wanted a reason to ship them, and I hope this will suffice.
> 
> Eastbourne was selected for the fact it was (fun fact) the only Tory seat to go Lib Dem in 2010. Otherwise, I play merry havoc with British politics (I am aware it's probably not quite this easy or fast to get yourself elected or a Junior Minister), but does this really need to be any longer? I should probably also say that I'm not actually as foul-mouthed or as much of a countryside bigot as Adam Kenyon, and I imagine there are in reality lots of lovely people living in and around Eastbourne.
> 
> As far as I know there's nothing to warn for in here apart from the language (which is nothing on the show itself), but as ever if there's anything you feel should be please do drop me a message.

It is generally recognised in Westminster that Malcolm Tucker is not a sociable man; but he had, some aeons ago, come to recognise that as it is required of him occasionally to slum it with a number of low-lifes for the good of the party, he might as well conglomerate it into one hideous, concentrated evening. Thus, once every three, four months the Prime Minister (meaning, obviously, Malcolm) holds what is known as _shite night_ , in which the merry hard-done-by of Westminster crawl together like desiccated sponges to try and lick a bit of power off the nearest man standing. For all that Malcolm’s not a sociable man, Adam’s certain he enjoys standing in front of a room of mangy, half-blind, three-legged wolves with a ten-ton steak on a shelf that’s just a _touch_ too high for them.

Tonight, it’s Adam’s turn. He’s been graciously liberated from the night shift in order to choke down piles of shit from aforementioned politicians and – if he’s lucky – shoehorn in a conversation with Malcolm in that doesn’t revolve entirely around Malcolm calling him an inbred shoe salesman to a baying crowd of cheery lackeys. Usually this involves prying off twelve angry Glaswegians with a fucking crowbar whilst navigating him into a cupboard to ensure the proverbial blowjob isn’t disturbed, but the aforementioned Scotsmen appear thankfully to be thin on the ground this evening.

Adam spies Malcolm across the room, unsurprisingly immersed in his BlackBerry but surprisingly unaccompanied; he puts down his glass of fizzy rats’ piss, squares his shoulders, and pushes away from the wall, feeling his bravado melt away with every step. Malcolm’s spotted him coming, has assumed an expression of quiet, malicious glee, and Adam knows there’s no fucking backing out of this now.

 

 

 

Adam backtracks out the room with a queasy smile, only holds back from running full-pelt towards liquor by the skin of his teeth. Well. That had gone about as fucking abysmally as he’d been expecting. Christ on a bike, he needs a drink.

By the time Adam reaches the bar, it’s already populated with a sparse scattering of familiarly disgruntled, shabbily-dressed men and women, glaring dazedly into their drinks, who had, five minutes ago, been drifting around hopefully upstairs until colliding inevitably, Brownian-style, into Malcolm. He settles at the bar next to one wearing a scowl and a well-fitting suit under a scruff of off-brown hair and mutters an order to the bored-looking barstaff.

“You look how I fucking feel.”

Adam grants his neighbour a second glance, follows it with a small smile. “You here for Tucker’s thing too?”

“Mmm. Balls handed back to me on a bloodied platter, the whole nine.”

 He watches, amused, as Adam downs the drink, beckons for another. “And are you one of the dismally elected or the dismally unelectable?” Adam asks; his neighbour’s face drops fleetingly into a scowl, before he sighs gloomily, lets it slide into resigned.

“Both. And neither, technically.” He looks Adam up and down, calculating with a tiny frown. “Mirror?”

“Mail.” He throws Adam a look; Adam resists the urge to flip him off, mutters, “it’s not forever. And anyway, Roy fucking Batty, what the fuck does “ _both and neither_ ” even mean?”

He sighs again, opens his mouth – then stiffens, looks at Adam sharply. “We are off the record here, aren’t we? I mean, you’re not one of Tucker’s fucking – ”

“Oh, piss off, as if. I was only fucking asking, Jesus fuck.”

A predictably awkward silence follows; Adam takes the opportunity to finish his drink, consider gloomily whether the company’s worth another. His companion shuffles a little, embarrassed, coughs under his breath. “Look. Just – ”

Adam holds up his hands. “Long day?”

He snorts, rubs at his eyes. “Yeah, you could – yes.” He drops his gaze onto Adam’s empty glass, gestures. “Can I?”

Adam pauses, rolls it between his fingers, nods. “Go on, then.”

Adam lets him buy the last lick of the bottle off the barman, then lead them over to a half-secluded, couch-rimmed table at the back of the room; he tips a hefty few fingers into either glass as he sits down, tugs one towards him, and flicks the other towards Adam.

“Adam, by the way.”

“Fergus.”

Adam sits, trying to hide his smile, but Fergus’ vicious look informs him he’s been unsuccessful; Adam spreads his hands, tries to look innocent. “What? I just didn’t think people were _actually_ called – ”

“Yeah, well, blame my fucking grandfather, alright?”

“Alright, alright, keep your fucking tits on, Jesus.” Adam takes a drink, pushes aside his grin. “Come on then, let’s hear it. Which party?”

“Lib Dem,” Fergus says, in a dry, monotonous tone that suggests he’s bracing himself for a familiar response; with some difficulty Adam swallows his snigger.

“But at least an elected one?” he asks, by way of compromise.

“Sort of. Currently, yes.” He takes a drink, his expression souring. “But given that I’ll next be standing in _fucking_ Eastbourne – ”

Adam frowns. “Hang on, isn’t that Haslemere’s seat? I-was-sucking-off-JB’s-dad-behind-the-Eton-bikesheds-before-you-were-fucking-born Haslemere?”

Fergus grins humourlessly, finishes the rest of his drink, drops the glass on the table with a _thunk_. “Tory since 1925.” He rubs his eyes, sighs dismally. “It’s their way of _quietly_ shafting me, seeing as I dared to publically disagree with fucking Generic Wankbot Three-Thousand on NHS spending reform.”

Adam raises his eyebrows. “Fuck me. That’s a bit steep.”

Fergus shrugs. “Yeah, well, I’m good at my job and I’ve never worn fishnets and blacked up for a Christmas do, so there’s no other way they can strongarm me out.” He refills both their glasses, holds his up. “Here’s to top-tier politics.”

Adam clinks their glasses, grins. “Is that why you’re talking to Tucker, then? Getting shit on Haslemere? If he doesn’t have twelve bastards and a gimp mask in his closet I’ll eat my fucking shoes.”

Fergus raises his eyebrows. “No, actually, that’d make a lot more fucking sense. Shit.” He flushes a little, glances at him sheepishly. “No, I, um, came to – ”

“To cross the floor,” Adam realises, crowing, and grins gleefully. “Fucking _hell_. I wish I’d seen that conversation, Malcolm must’ve – ”

Fergus nods, smiles into his hand. “Yes. Emphatically. It was worth a try.” He looks down at his drink; his grin turns gloomy. “But that basically leaves me here, getting pissed with a fucking _Daily Mail_ journalist on a Friday night.” He scours his face with his hand, groans. “Eastbourne. Fuck _me_.”

Adam snorts, fishes his phone out of his pocket, flicks past twelve emails from Angela threatening to castrate him with a corkscrew if he’s not back with them by midnight. “Yeah, good luck with that one, mate.” He pockets it, gets to his feet. “Anyway, cheers for the – ” He gestures at the now-empty bottle vaguely. “ – but I’d better be – ”

“Yeah, sure.” Fergus looks up at him, pauses. “Listen, my car’s outside, can I – ?”

“Nah, don’t worry, I’ll walk.”

Angela throws him a grin as he walks through the door, asks, “how was it?”; he hopes the look he gives her back as he enters his office is answer enough. She certainly shuts up, goes back to looking smug. Once seated in the leatherback, uncomfortable chair, he pulls up his emails to find that aside from the ritual humiliation given by Malcolm Tucker at the very notion of him entering politics having already made its way round the office, his boss has done a massive partisan office politics-shaped shit on his desk, and his neighbour’s taken a hatchet to the fucking tumble dryer “because of the weird noise it was making”. What a fucking night.

 

 

 

He’s knocked out on his desk when the phone rings; he hadn’t meant to sleep, and his head’s thick and pounding as he stares at the buzzing, shrieking thing blearily. Adam sits up, rubs his eyes, remembers how his fingers work. “What?”

 _“Fucking finally,”_ the voice says, and Adam scours his face with his hand, stifles a yawn.

“Fergus? How the fuck did you – ?”

_“I rang reception and asked to speak to you. Surprisingly enough, there’s only one Adam psychotic enough to be at the Daily Mail’s offices at four in the morning.”_

Adam eyes up the coffee pot on the other side of the room, vehemently detests the fact his office still has a fucking _corded_ phone. Very fucking 1983. “Okay, cute, if borderline restraining-order worthy.” He gives up, lets the yawn happen, despite the fact it renders him barely comprehensible. “What the fuck do you want, anyway? God, I’m not doing some fucking awful opinion piece or something – our readership would – ”

 _“Fuck off, I’d rather fellate Saddam fucking Hussein.”_ An awkward pause; Adam fishes around for something to throw at Angela, slumped morosely over her desk, drooling into her elbow. _“I was wondering,”_ he continues, slowly, as Adam hooks his fingers round a spare notebook from the shelves behind his desk and begins to tear out a page, _“whether you’d like a job.”_

Adam freezes mid-scrunch. “I already have a job.”

_“Don’t be fucking coy. You run the night shift on the Daily fucking Mail, for fuck’s sake.”_

Adam snorts. “And what, helping you to fail at your disastrous fucking campaign in the safest Tory seat since fucking _Witney_ is supposed to be a desirable alternative to that?”

_“You want to go into politics.”_

“Yeah, but.” Into one of the electable parties, he almost says, but bites his tongue at the last moment. He continues his one-handed scrunch, chucks the paper ball at Angela; no response. “How the fuck did you know that, anyway?”

_“I figured there are two reasons why you end up working for the Daily Mail. You’re either a secret UKIP-voting, immigrant-hating, cancer-obsessed fascist, or you’re so desperate to get your foot on the ladder you abandoned any morals you ever had the moment you stepped into Westminster.”_

Adam pauses mid-scrunch to shrug and sits down on the edge of his desk. Pretty damn close. “And why me, exactly?”

_“I like you. Also, everyone else I’ve asked has laughed in my face. But mainly because I like you.”_

“Poof,” Adam mutters half-heartedly, allowing himself another yawn. Across the office, Angela lets out a little snore. Fuck it. “Yeah, go on then, I’ll call it a fucking sabbatical. There’re a few in Westminster who still owe me a blowjob if it all goes tits-up. You got somewhere to live down there? We’d better start on this a.s.a-fucking-p.”

 _“Good point. Your first job is to go flat-hunting,”_ Fergus says cheerily, and Adam lets himself collapse onto his desk with a groan.

 

 

 

Eastbourne turns out to be every inch as fucking dreary as he’d been expecting. He’d located the party offices with some difficulty, partly thanks to the abysmal instructions passed onto them by his predecessor but also because it was hardly an office at all – more like a room at the top of a flight of rickety, half-built stairs, shoved round the back of a chip shop three streets back from the waterfront. Adam spends a productive and unfortunately memorable Monday afternoon lugging two computers, two cupboards, four boxes of election paraphernalia, and two printers up aforementioned stairs before coming to the conclusion he’s too _fucking_ old for this and paying the first teenager he finds loitering round the corner ten quid to do the rest for him.

Fergus, predictably, is back in London, steering him remotely round Eastbourne like R2-fucking-D2 while he embeds himself in what he’s insisted are party politics – Adam’s ninety-five percent sure he just doesn’t want to stay in their flat until he’s managed to get the hot water on and the wifi to work, though he’s surprised the area had even passed from dialup to fucking broadband.

Adam staggers up the stairs with the teenager in tow – thankfully the last load – and manages to catch the phone just as it goes, pressing a note in the kid’s hand and shoving him towards the front door. _“How’s the office?”_

Adam glances around the dingy, cardboard box-filled room, trying not to sneeze at the upturned dust. “It’s not an office, it’s a fucking broom cupboard with a modem connection. There’s barely room to swing your dick around, never mind a fucking cat. How was the interview?”

_“Good, actually – Trevor’s not a twat, I didn’t put my foot in it, and it should be out in time for the debate on Thursday. Oh, and Michael rang to wish me luck. Sanctimonious little shit.”_

“Yeah, well, just fucking ignore him. You got what you need for this afternoon?”

_“Yeah, came through this morning, cheers. How’re the leaflets looking?”_

Adam glances at the nearest box, allows himself a grin. “Fucking gorgeous. The yellow really brings out your eyes.”

_“Twat. How ginger do I look, on a scale of Kinnock to Harry?”_

“Definitely around a Becker.”

 _“I’ll take that. Anyway, listen, I’d better –_ ”

“Yeah, yeah, sure.” Adam pauses, chews his lip. “And you’re coming down – ?”

_“Wednesday, three-thirty. With about twelve million suitcases, so if you don’t meet me off the train I’ll push you off the fucking pier.”_

Adam hangs up with a grin. The silence of the office envelops him again; traffic, accompanied by the far-off sounds of seagulls and the deep-fat fryer through the floor below. It hits him, as it does, periodically, the ridiculous enormity of what they’re trying to achieve here – moving to contest a Conservative safe-seat with barely a heartbeat’s worth of time to convince a load of Tory-loving racists that the _Liberal fucking Democrats_ are the way forward for them.

Adam may be a politician now, but he was technically a journalist first; and he has a good feeling about the DNA tests burning a hole through his jacket pocket and the stack of photographs he has sat on his harddrive, sequestered from one Malcolm Tucker the night previously with a smile and the promise of his firstborn child. No one ever said he had to make this a fair fight.

 

 

 

Unfortunately, however, good politics these days is as much about letting the populace know why you’re any good as it is convincing them all the other guys are tossers; and for Adam, here and now, that means fucking _leafleting_. Another job Fergus managed to dodge out of on his Party Politics Escapade-slash-Nightmare, which means Adam supposedly covering the whole fucking borough singlehandedly. Needless to say, he’s enlisted a bit of help in this department, but he’s still winding up and down backstreets in fucking Langney with a messenger-bag full of posters with Fergus’ solemn-yet-cheerful face gurning up at him.

Fergus manages to ring him just in time to catch the end of an elderly racist yelling _you’ll never get in round here!_ as Adam legs it down the drive away from his fucking Rottweiler; he, a good fucking hundred miles away, naturally pisses himself at Adam’s misfortune. “Such a dick,” Adam mutters as he tries single-handedly to nurse some feeling back into his fingers; to top it all off, the fucker had had one of those hairy guillotines in his letterbox, and it tried to take Adam’s fingers off. “If you’re ringing to say you’re not coming, I’m coming up to London to fucking kill you myself.”

_“No, just running late from the Mirror. Got cornered by your mate Edward and forced to smile through the usual barrage. Missed the train. How’s the leafleting going?”_

Fergus sounds inappropriately gleeful. “I’m going to fucking choke you to death with your own appendix,” Adam replies in a monotone, fishing in his bag for the next clump. “Oh, this guy has a poster up of you in the window, how sweet. And he spelt communist right and everything. You don’t photograph well, do you?”

_“Twat.”_

“Christ, we should’ve got you to a hairdresser before taking these, you look like a drowned cow.”

Down the phoneline, Fergus appears to be choking on air. _“Aren’t you supposed to work for me?”_

Adam pauses mid-rummage, gives the air around him a pointed look. “I can stop working for you, if you fucking like.”

Fergus’ reply is just a half-heartbeat too slow, and there’s a quick, awkward pause before he mutters, “ _very fucking funny,”_ in which Adam’s heart fleetingly detaches from his chest and lodges firmly in his vocal chords.

Adam shifts his weight, clears his throat, and though he aims for neutral he’s aware he still sounds horribly strained. “When’s your train getting in, then?”

_“Half five, I think. Remember – ”_

“Yeah, yeah, calm your fucking tits, I’ll be there.”

 

 

 

Fergus hadn’t been joking about the suitcases. “Fuck me,” Adam says, hauling the first of four away from the platform edge. “Did you never learn to pack light? You’re staying for the weekend, not launching a fucking invasion of France, you know. What the fuck do you even have in here?”

“I robbed the Tower,” Fergus says dryly, slinging a bag over his shoulder. “I’m selling the Crown Jewels to Cash for Gold.”

Fergus acquiesces on a taxi to the flat, but predictably leaves Adam to haul them up the stairs to nose around it; he does, however, have a mug of tea waiting for him when he finishes dragging the last one round the corner, and Adam decides it’s enough to acquit him from a distempered bollocking. “Well?”

“It’s... small,” Fergus says as Adam roots around for Fergus’ laptop, sets it up on the kitchen table.

“Yeah, well, the next one up wanted twice as much and it’s only for a couple of months. Besides, you think this is small, wait til you see the office.”

“There’s only one bedroom.”

There’s something slightly odd in Fergus’ voice; Adam shakes his head, gestures vaguely to one side. “Sofabed,” he clarifies, and looks up; Fergus looks like a fucking beetroot, and is resolutely not meeting his eye. For the sake of his own fucking sanity Adam decides to let it slide. “Password?”

Fergus walks over, nudges Adam out the way, sits down. “I’ll do it.”

Adam slides into the next chair, rolls his eyes. “Christ on a bendy bus, this would be a very convoluted way of stealing state secrets, you know.”

Fergus flips him off half-heartedly, logs himself in, pushes the laptop back towards Adam. “What’s the plan for the evening, anyway?”

“Well, I thought it might be good for you to show your face around town, contribute to the local economy, that sort of thing.”

“Meaning?”

“Curry and a drink in the local?”

Fergus grins at him. “Genius.”

 

 

 

The weekend is mainly a non-event. Fergus gets called a shit-stabbing communist by at least four of the more enthusiastic locals, which makes him turn a particularly interesting shade of red and gives Adam about four seconds to get him or them out of the room before he fucks his career six ways to Sunday – but that aside, the local press seem receptive to the point of starving for anything other than blue-blood politics, and a small but determined cluster of regular liberal voters pledged life and limb to Adam for the next year and a half to get Fergus in power. With some relief that Adam has the job in hand, Fergus agrees to be put on the six thirty back to London after only a minor amount of fuss and emotional blackmail.

Adam gets nothing but radio silence from Fergus for a week and a half; he tries not to take it as a personal slight, tries not to scowl as he slams headfirst into his voicemail yet again and resists the urge to leave his twelfth miserably pleading message begging for his attention. Eventually, he comes home from a day of _literally_ picking up dogshit (Fergus had sounded a little too gleeful when he had pointed out it had worked for Harvey Milk) to find a message from Fergus’ PA’s PA that, all things going to plan, he should be able to make time for a five-minute Skype between the BBC News at Ten and Question Time tonight. Adam grits his teeth, smiles, resists the urge to ring back and rip the moron’s head off down the phone. He’s beginning to see why they never fucking win.

He’s got the TV on mute in the background, idly spinning his chair and playing half-heartedly with his computer’s solitaire (speaking of never fucking winning) when Fergus _finally_ deigns to call. He looks – interesting. Hair a fucking mess, top button undone, cuffs caught up around his elbows, the skin beneath his eyes insomnia-bruised. Not someone Adam would put in front of a camera without at least two weeks’ sleep or a massive fucking heroin injection. “Fuck me, I’ve seen malaria survivors look healthier, you okay?”

 _“Yeah, fine, just a head cold thing. It’ll clear. Look, I’ve –_ ”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ve had fucking Goebbels down my throat already, I know I’ve only got three nanoseconds. I just thought I should check in, given I’m basically running your fucking election campaign here.”

Fergus shoots the camera a look, flips him off, but at least there’s a hint of a half-smile there. _“So how’ve you found things?”_

“Not – a total disaster. I reckon there’s about twenty percent we’ve just got to fucking write off, you know, the fucking piss-dripping senile born-and-bred Thatcherites – we’re wasting our fucking breath there. But – ”

_“Eighty percent sounds good?”_

“Yeah, if it wasn’t a fucking fifty percent turnout rate.”

_“Ah. So when you said it wasn’t bad, that was basically a lie, then.”_

Adam throws him a look. “Let me finish,” he replies, rubbing his eyes. “The other thirty percent, I reckon you’re talking about five Labour, then about two more the resident die-hard nutters, you know, the UKIP, BNP, fucking Lunatics Reunited wankers whose vote is about as much use to us as the Pope in a sexual health clinic.”

Fergus settles back, cards a hand through his hair. _“Which leaves us with, what, twenty, twenty two?”_

“Twenty three, actually, Carol. Of which twenty – ”

 _“Wait, wait, hang on, I need to – just a second –_ ” Adam’s left in the lurch for a heartbeat and a half as Fergus moves rooms, giving him a blotchy close-up of his chest and the beginnings of a pressure headache. He’s dropped unceremoniously on the floor, left staring sideways at the bottom of the sofa as Fergus settles into position, and then the unmistakeable sound of Dimbleby filters through his tinny speakers and Fergus reappears in view. _“Sorry, I promised Anna I’d –_ ”

“Yeah, no worries,” Adam says half-heartedly as he tries to remember whether Anna is the PA, the PA’s PA, or Fergus’ boss’ PA. She could run the fucking canteen, from what he knows about Lib Dem politics. “Basically, what we’re really fighting them over is for roughly three percent.”

Fergus shoots the camera a look of mild alarm. _“Three? Fuck me, that’s a little tight. That’s what, fifteen hundred people?”_

Adam shrugs. “Thereabouts.”

 _“Fuck,”_ he mutters, as Dimblebly chunters on in the background, ignored. _“Fuck.”_ He looks down at Adam. _“Do you think we can do it?”_ he asks, voice honest and open and so fucking _tired_ , and Adam wishes he had something better to bring him.

“I,” he begins, glances to one side, half-shrugs. Despite his brief sojourn into journalism, he’s a politician at heart, and he finds it very fucking difficult to deliver bad news without spin. Fergus, however, is two steps ahead of him, and sums up the situation with a third, and final, “ _fuck.”_

An awkward silence falls. For Adam, this is just the latest in a long line of ramshackle and unsuccessful attempts to break out of morally dubious journalism and into morally dubious politics; but this is Fergus’ career, and by the sounds of it he hasn’t made himself too popular in Westminster recently. Adam can go grovelling to at least three London newsrooms, expect to find a job that isn’t – at least – much worse than what he was doing before, but Fergus...

Tentatively, quietly, Adam shifts a little, says, “do you want me to – ”

Fergus’ gaze drops to him instantly. _“Do_ you _want to?”_

“No!” he says, immediately and loudly, but then it occurs to him he no longer has any idea what Fergus was actually saying to him. “I mean, yes – I want to – ”

_“Stay?”_

“Yes,” he replies instantly. “ Even if we don’t win,” he continues, slowly, “there’s no harm in – ”

_“No, totally, yes. Worth a – ”_

“Yeah, at least.” Adam feels a second silence looming like a fucking iceberg, decides to take the initiative this time. “Look, why don’t you – and I’ll draw up some, you know, strategy – ”

 _“Perfect, yeah, thanks,”_ Fergus replies, but he only sounds-half here, like he’s running on autopilot. _“Anyway, I’d better.”_ He gestures vaguely behind the laptop screen, at what Adam assumes is his television. _“I’ll speak to you soon.”_

“Yeah,” Adam replies as he hangs up, eyes absently settled on the pitch-black screen. “Sure.”

Adam showers, changes, gets into the single bed and lies there, staring mindlessly at the blank wall. It has occurred to him there are probably kinder ways to announce to your boss their career is essentially fucked.

 

 

Three months in on the convoluted clusterfuck of an election campaign, and Adam doesn’t regret moving out of London; doesn’t regret the hours spent; doesn’t regret the tiny, fat-stenched office, or the equally tiny flat; but he does regret that he’s had to do it all in fucking _Eastbourne_. Adam is London-born-and-bred for at least three generations, and anywhere with a population of less than five million makes his skin crawl. Fergus, however, he’s beginning to suspect was manor-born and only joined the Lib Dems as part of some late misplaced rebellious streak; he’s certainly enjoying Eastbourne far more than him, on the rare occasion he deigns the town with his presence.

To Adam’s surprise, as a politician Fergus is... not half bad. Sure, half the policies they’ve padded up the leaflet with are fluffy, unachievable wank, but the same can be said of Haslemere’s manifesto; and the other half are, well, pretty fucking good ideas, if he’s honest. They’d spent long enough trying to think them up, three all-nighters in front of rolling news with a pen in one hand and a bottomless cup of coffee in the other, and though Adam being Adam he’d never say as much, the vast majority of ideas actually came from Fergus, and not his advisor.

Media appearances are, however, still very much Adam’s forté; Fergus seems convinced he can win hearts and minds by hanging around the end of the pier with a few leaflets on a Sunday afternoon, but Adam’s fully aware that these days democracy entails watching your politicians make a twat of themselves on live TV. This leaves Adam hanging nervously off-screen in the back office of the local newsroom on a Friday night, as Fergus, eerie greenscreen behind him, talks wank earnestly and remarkably convincingly down a camera lens to some Paxo wannabe.

Angus, a posh, curly-haired wanker who’s largely in charge of the poky hole they call their newsroom, angles his head towards him, and mutters, “you know, he’s not half bad, your man. Looks like a startled chicken in most of your posters, but put him in front of a camera...”

Adam sends him a look, follows it up with a shrug. “Have to say, didn’t know he’d be able to make this vapid bullshit sound convincingly practical.”

Angus grins at him. “Nice to know you care about Eastbourne.”

“Bollocks to Eastbourne. Half the wankers down on the beach front miss Heseltine and the other half are so fucking senile they’re convinced they’ve already elected him. If we walk away from this with twenty votes I’ll be happy, never mind twenty thousand.”

Angus fixes him with an unnervingly calculating stare. “What’s all this about, then, if it’s not about winning?” Adam shrugs, runs his hand through his hair, settles his gaze on Fergus, still earnestly preaching to camera. Angus sends him a long, disbelieving look, rolls his eyes, lets it slide. “He’s definitely one of the new breed, though. Looks about twelve, can spin a pretty tale, but really he’s all arse and no trousers.”

Across the room, the camera cuts back to the studio; Fergus visibly deflates three inches, throws Adam a harrowed look, extricates himself from behind the desk and staggers over. He sticks out a wobbly finger as he nears him, says, “I am never, ever doing that again.”

Adam rolls his eyes, hands him his coat. “Don’t be so fucking melodramatic, you did fine – more than fine, you almost had _me_ convinced. Pub?”

Fergus rubs his eyes, shakes his head. “Home.”

It’s gone one before they get back to the flat; a misguided sense of public spirit means Adam convinces Fergus to at least _try_ and get the bus, and they’re three quarters of an hour in the freezing fucking mist before he acquiesces and lets him call a cab instead. Fergus makes a beeline for the kitchen the moment they get in, and by the time Adam’s finished paying the cabbie and navigating the winding, piss-stenched halls, Fergus is collapsed at the table with half a beer in hand. Adam rolls his eyes, settles in front of Fergus’ laptop, biro twiddling in one hand, and boots up tonight’s performance.

Fergus groans, drops his head into his hands. “Do we have to do this _now_?”

Adam kicks him under the table, rewinds the recording back to the beginning. “You don’t. Get some sleep.”

Fergus sends him a look of pure relief, downs the rest of his beer, and drags himself up, aims for the bedroom. He pauses in the doorway, turns round, stares at Adam blearily. “Don’t – ”

“Bed,” Adam interrupts flatly, eyebrow raised, and Fergus flips him off, staggers off without another glance, yawning.

He doesn’t quite manage _all_ night; he knows the sun was out before he nodded off, but he’s woken by Fergus at half eight nudging his hand with a mug of coffee that smells strong enough to curdle milk at thirty feet. “Follow it up with a shower,” Fergus says, standing just a little too long by the table. “You smell like my great aunt Wilma.”

Adam groans, sits up, tries and fails to rub his eyes without jabbing himself with a finger. “What did she smell of?”

“Piss and biscuits, mostly. You reading that?”

Adam glances half-heartedly at the paper, shakes his head. “Be my fucking guest.” He takes the mug in hand, drags himself onto his feet. “Check out page thirteen, their spelling of _cataclysmically_ is pretty fucking ironic. Honestly, it’s all gone to hell in a handcart since I left.”

Fergus glances down at it, smirks. “How was the video?”

 “I wrote you some notes,” he replies, and Fergus throws him a look that says _of course you fucking did_. “What time train were you aiming for?”

“Three-ish. Why?” Fergus asks, then instantly looks mortified, lets out a low groan. “Oh _god_ , don’t tell me – we’re launching free cats at geriatrics – I’m opening a fucking toilet cubicle – ”

“Crafts fair,” Adam replies in a monotone, grinning. “Thought you might like to be seen promoting local goods.”

Fergus looks wonderfully miserable as he slams forward onto the table, groaning. “Only craft round here is not falling into sheep shit on a Friday night.”

“You promised Janine you’d go.” Fergus lifts his head off the table, throws him a confused look. “You know, Janine, the librarian, you met her at the – ”

“Ohhhh,” he drawls, grinning. “It’s _Janine_ , is it?”

Adam grants him a tired look, drags himself out of the chair to head for the bathroom. “Just ‘cause the last time a woman saw you with your trousers down was at your last prostate check.”

Fergus scowls at him, mutters, “get fucked.”

“Someone’s got to,” Adam shouts back at him, ducking gleefully out of the path of the frisbeed newspaper.

 

 

 

“This is _literally_ gay.”

Adam sucks back in a sigh through his teeth, rubs his eyes. “You can’t say that.”

Fergus glares at him. “Yes I fucking can. That stall over there is stacked with fucking strap-ons and anal beads.”

Adam follows his gaze, runs his eye along the unidentifiable wooden paraphernalia uncertainly, finishing with the slightly alarming glazed grin of the man behind it. “They’re... I don’t know, tribal or something.”

“Tribal? _Tribal_?! We’re in fucking _Sussex_!”

“Keep your fucking voice down,” he hisses, trying hard to swallow a grin. “And _try_ and look like you’re enjoying yourself. No point in doing a fucking photo op if you spend it looking like someone’s just made you eat your dead grandmother’s faeces.”

“Or read your own fucking manifesto,” Fergus mutters sourly, kicking the ground like a fucking four-year-old. They’ve been bouncing around the fair for a good hour, and after sampling about twelve different types of olive and assuming a politely glazed expression as the local fossil collector explained in detail his current display, Fergus is fighting with every breath Adam’s assertion that they have to stay there at _least_ ninety minutes for it to be worthwhile.

“Have you ever considered homeopathic medicine?” a faint, ethereal voice interrupts from nowhere, and Adam looks up, vaguely alarmed to find a willowy woman with a ominously absent smile is eyeing up Fergus with worrying temerity.

Fergus instantly goes bright red. “Er,” he says. “No.” He shifts from side to side, smiles uncertainly. “I hear it’s good for, um, bowels, and stuff, though.”

An excruciatingly awkward pause follows; Adam grants the confused woman a kindly smile, takes Fergus by the elbow and steers him off in the other direction. “Oh look,” Adam says, grinning inanely as Fergus slowly and miserably collapses inwards from embarrassment. “Olive wood.”

Fergus groans, head in hands. “ _I hate you_. Why didn’t you _stop_ me?”

“I’ll get you a present for the flat,” Adam continues cheerily, ignoring him. “How about one of these?”

Fergus eyes it up glumly. “A spoon with a hole in it.”

Adam scowls at him, scandalised. “It’s for risotto, you fucking philistine.”

Fergus throws him a sideways look. “Maybe you could make one for _Janine_ ,” he says, slyly.

After a mild scuffle and a quiet but hysterical conversation with the shopkeeper, Adam goes home with a splintered spoon in his pocket and a scowl on his face. To be honest, what pisses him off more than the fifteen quid poorly spent is how insufferably fucking _smug_ Fergus had looked for the rest of the afternoon.

 

 

 

Nine months down, five to go, and Adam’s ready to eat his own fucking eyeballs from boredom. Aside from the fact he seems to spend every waking moment drafting and redrafting and fucking proof-reading Fergus’ hot mess of a manifesto, finding photo ops, liaising with the council, it gets under his fucking skin even more that he only actually gets to speak to Fergus himself once in a blue moon. He feels like Boris Johnson’s fucking lovechild.

Because of this, they’ve scheduled in a permanent Skype session on a Thursday afternoon – apart from this week the Shadow Minister for Agriculture managed to accidentally decapitate a chicken or something, so it’s now decidedly Thursday fucking evening – technically, Friday fucking morning – and a bleary-eyed Fergus is sat up in bed with his laptop balanced on one leg, experiencing serious technical difficulties.

“ – no, look, I’ve lost you again – you have to press the – ”

_“This thing?”_

“Yes, yes – no no _no_ , don’t touch that!”

 _“Okay, okay, Christ, keep your knickers on.”_ Fergus shifts back against the headboard, rubs his eyes. _“So come on, what’ve you been up to, then? Other than the masturbating to –_ ”

“Fuck you, I haven’t had sex in _months_ because of you.” Fergus, to his annoyance, looks rather fucking pleased about this. “I got you a meeting. Well, a sort of interview. With Haslemere.”

Fergus gives him a look. _“With the greatest respect, what the fuck are you on about?”_

“I said interview, I meant debate – ”

Fergus groans. _“I specifically said – no fucking debates, they just look like fucking point –_ ”

Adam cuts him off with a raised hand and a look. “Look, he’s up in London and everything – can you do Wednesday or not?”

 _“_ This _Wednesday?”_

“ _No_ , Wednesday the twenty fifth of January Twenty-fucking-thirteen, Jesus fucking Christ.”

_“The twenty-fifth is a Friday, actually.”_

Adam sends him a look that he hopes conveys, quite acutely, how severe his urge is to get on a train to London and strangle him to death with his own spleen. “Can you make it?” he reiterates, as slowly as he can fucking manage.

_“Technically I’m supposed to be eating canapés at the fucking FO, but I think I’d rather eat my own bollocks, frankly. Did you want to do some prep beforehand?”_

“Just a sec.” Adam tabs to the other window, hits send. “Check your email.”

_“What’s this?”_

“Your policy on education, immigration, welfare, and budget cuts, compared and contrasted with Haslemere’s.”

 _“How very thorough of me,”_ Fergus murmurs, grinning.

Adam finds himself echoing it, schools his expression. “Just make sure you know it, alright. And you haven’t forgotten about – ”

 _“Tomorrow at the Barbican, yes, I know.”_ Fergus shuffles the pillows behind his back, rubs his eyes. _“I read your manifesto reshuffle. It’s good. It almost had me convinced, and I_ know _it’s a load of fucking wank.”_

Adam throws him a look. “Cheers,” he says, dryly, but Fergus, ignoring him, yawns hugely. “Yeah, yeah, I get the fucking point. Is there anything – ? ”

Fergus glances at him, pauses for a fleeting second, then shakes his head. _“No, you’re good. I’ll speak to you in a week, yeah?”_

Adam nods; it feels like a very fucking long way away. “Just don’t fuck up Wednesday. Or tomorrow, for that matter.”

_“I adore your faith in me.”_

Adam potters around for a half hour or so, half-heartedly watches some late-night footie, tries in vain to pretend the only reason he’s up this late isn’t because he was waiting on Fergus to call. Outside, the charming view of a concrete grey wall is smudged and obscured by a thin frost and a thick rain; Adam stares at it gloomily, huffs out a sigh. Christ alive, he will not be sorry to get back to London, to his open-plan, crisp-white flat with water pressure and phone signal and a population bigger than three fishermen and the prostitute they pass round to keep warm on Friday nights.

 

 

 

Fergus moves in for good on a dismal Sunday evening three months before the election, and Adam instantly realises that the flat is definitely not meant for two. With almost a year on his own (give or take the weekends) it feels a bit fucking surreal to wake up to Fergus burning toast four days in a row and a stack of underwear piled unceremoniously and fucking inconveniently at the foot of the washing machine, spewing odd socks across the linoleum.

“I’m not fucking touching that,” Adam says as Fergus shuffles into the room in shirt and socks, trousers in one hand and the iron in the other. “I’m not your fucking _butler_.”

Fergus gives him a flat look as he assembles the ironing board. “Calm down, I’ll do it tonight. Have you seen my – ” He stops mid-iron to gesture vaguely at his neck. “ – you know, the – ?” Adam cuts him off, hands him his disgustingly blue tie. “Cheers,” he says, balances the iron to flick up his collar and tie it.

Adam nods at him, returns his attention to his phone. “Blue?”

“Yeah, well, it looks like it’s heading that way,” Fergus mutters gloomily, reaching down to unplug the iron. “Fuck me, sometimes I think Michael handed his bollocks over with his brain in 2007. Fucking _Tories_.”

Adam half-shrugs in agreement; he can’t say it’s ever particularly mattered to him precisely whose coat-tails he’s riding on. “Speaking of Tories, d’you see Haslemere wants a rematch?”

“Oh _yeah_ , I’m looking forward to it,” Fergus deadpans, grinning. “Maybe he’ll come out with something this time that isn’t fucking – mouthwash.”

Adam snorts. “Don’t hold your fucking breath. You coming out tonight, by the way?”

“What is it tonight?” Fergus asks, frowning, and looks briefly panicked. “Your birthday – ”

“25th June.”

“Remind me closer to the time, I’ll schedule you in for a blowjob.”

Adam rolls his eyes, flips him off. “Rick’s been promoted.”

“Oh?” Fergus says, far too evenly. “What is he now?”

“Assistant distribution manager,” Adam replies dryly, and holds up his finger. “ _Don’t_ fucking laugh, you utter tosspot – ”

Fergus fails entirely to stop grinning. “Sorry, sorry, I’ve just never heard shelf-stacking – sorry.” He schools his expression half-heartedly, spreads his palms. “I’ll buy him a drink and everything.”

In lieu of living like a fucking hermit for a year and a half, and because it was basically in his job description, Adam had done his best from early on to ingratiate himself with the local population, and amongst those he’d targeted were the staff of the local supermarket; not the Sainsbury’s up the road, but the independent struggling desperately for business on the other side of town – local produce, local employees, local ads in the window, but twice the fucking price and distance and half the fucking stock. Still, makes for a good photo for Fergus to be seen _supporting the community_ , and given Haslemere actually knows the Sainsbury family Adam honed in on it in the early days as yet another neat contrast he’s all too keen to play up at every opportunity. And the staff there are – well, interesting. Very... local.

“At least try and be nice,” Adam says, attention down on his BlackBerry. “They did some good work for us last Tuesday at the pavilion, and Archie did at least half the leafleting I – ”

“Archie did _exercise_?”

Adam sends Fergus a sharp look. “You’re in no fucking position to make fat jokes,” he replies, returning to his phone, but he doesn’t miss the foul look Fergus gives him as he climbs into his newly-pressed trousers, scowling forlornly down at his waistband. “Ready?”

“Yeah, hang on, shoes.” It occurs to Adam as he watches Fergus shuffle off in sock-clad feet, grousing quietly to himself under his breath, that this is supposedly the future of British politics. God fucking help them.

 

 

 

By this point, Adam knows half the clientele of _The Red Herring_ by sight if not by name, and they get a good few welcoming nods as they walk in; it’s not exactly his local, but he’d twigged early on that a rather sympathetic crowd would occasionally hustle there to chunter quietly to one another of an evening. If Adam can do the necessary but in the presence of alcohol he’s all the happier for it; and a large part of Adam’s campaign has been to try and get Fergus to look like anything other than that wanker Haslemere – i.e. a decent fucking human being – and a large part of _that_ has involved them scouting the local wildlife, as it were. Fergus hasn’t complained much; if it weren’t for the odd way he sometimes turns his ts, Adam would be convinced he was born and fucking bred on a pub floor.

With the gathered crowd on Rick’s behalf, the pub’s a bit thicker on the ground than usual tonight; and Adam tries to hide a smile at the low, unhappy groan Fergus lets out when they walk in and are met with a wall of cheers and beckoning arms. Adam leans over, murmurs in his ear with a grin. “You promised free drinks. Fatal error.”

Fergus glowers at him, eyes up the packed bar full of uncharacteristically friendly faces. “Didn’t know the whole fucking town was going to turn up.” He sighs, shrugs off his coat. “Usual?”

“Yeah, cheers.”

Adam wanders over to the table, gets pulled into an unceremonious, one-armed, sloppy hug by Rick when Adam congratulates him; evidently their company is already half-cut. Ian leans over the table and loudly attempts to drunkenly wrestle with some of the larger issues of party politics, but given that he’s struggling to pronounce the word _politician_ clearly it’s somewhat of a lagging conversation; then Fergus turns up with the drinks to bellowing applause, and Adam ends up crushed between Steve and Sophie, the quiet girl responsible for their accounts who grants him a wry smile and an entirely sympathetic ear.

When Rick staggers to his feet and launches into a speech he definitely won’t be able to finish Adam takes the opportunity to dive for the exit, relishing the wet slap of ice-cold air as he nudges open the back door. The loos are in a separate building tucked round the side, and he collects a few assorted nods from the cluster of smokers hanging near the bins; he’d considered (if briefly and very fucking stupidly) dropping back into the habit in the hope of securing a little more of that three percent. Adam grants them a nod each in turn, feeling a bit like a fucking pigeon, and hops up the steps to the gents two at a time, curls his fingers round the door latch –

 – across the room, up against the wall, is Fergus, only half-recognisable behind the skinny fucker leaning up against him, hands up his shirt and mouth clamped firmly on his neck. A look of total panic assembles on Fergus’ face the minute he spots him, a shove and a muffled “oh _Jesus Christ –_ ”, but Adam’s already back out the door and pulling in shallow breaths of acerbic air, his mind a white wall of static, a spiralling, never-ending _fuuuuuuuuuck_ like tinny autotune rattling round his skull.

He still needs to piss, though – he goes round the corner to the disabled and does, leans heavily on the sink after washing his hands and stares dead-eyed at himself in the mirror, his breath still frustratingly uneven, his skin feeling itchy and tight. Christ. What if they want the flat? Him on the sofabed, a big fucking third wheel. Can you third wheel in your own fucking flat?

He hears Fergus asking the smoking cluster after him through the thin wooden door, steels his shoulders and opens it, resists the urge to fidget. Fergus spins to face him almost comically, looking half-relieved and half-terrified, and blurts, immediately, “we’re not – ”

Adam cuts him off with a blank smile, trying not to point out the fucking Albert Square-esque audience around them, and gestures towards the road. “Taxi?”

Fergus rocks back on his heels, nods nervously, follows it up with something about finding his coat, disappears back inside. The nearest of the smokers, Andy, built like a brick shithouse with wiry black hair and a thick Mancunian accent, grants Adam a level look. “Got your hands full there. Comes across as if he’s two bob short sometimes.”

Adam snorts. “Don’t I fucking know it,” he mutters, receives a patter of knowing, sympathetic nods from the crowd.

Fergus becomes immediately fascinated by the pavement the moment Adam joins him round the front, and Adam bites back a sigh as he comes to stand next to him; this could turn into a very fucking long three months. Fergus sends him a sideways glance, shuffles a little, opens his mouth, and Adam holds up his hand, sends him a look. “You’re fine,” he says, smiles. “Seriously.”

Fergus crumples with relief, assumes a nervous grin. Adam supposes from an ex- _Mail_ journalist he expected blackmail, extortion, the whole nine – or worse, some half-hearted attempt to include it in the campaign.

They share the sofa in front of _Question Time_ ; Adam gives up on a long, hysterical speech from Janet Street Porter to make himself tea and find Fergus alcohol. “Bet you miss working with her,” Fergus calls after him as Adam shuffles into the kitchen, and Adam bites his tongue against a quip about drama queens. Thankfully, by the time he finishes juggling glasses and the door the debate has moved on from parking tickets to the Arab Spring, and Janet is wisely keeping quiet. “Waste of good fucking air, that woman,” Fergus mutters, eyes down on his phone.

Adam glances at him, grins. “You don’t know the half of it. You know, she once honestly asked me whether cystic fibrosis was a breakfast cereal.”

Fergus snorts. “Don’t tell Michael that, he’ll give her a position on the fucking Cabinet. Minister for Agriculture. Mind you, still better than the sack of shit we’ve got at the moment.” Across the room, Dimbleby dismisses them; Fergus huffs out a sigh, drags himself to his feet. “Right, that’s me. Especially given the fucking ungodly hour you want me awake in the morning.” They’re on a schools visit tomorrow, which means bright and early, obviously; it’s one of the few occasions on Fergus’ calendar Adam’s not at all concerned about, given that Fergus has an uncanny ability to hivemind with children under eight – probably because they’re sharing the same fucking brainwaves. “Want me to – ?” He gestures at the television.

Adam shakes his head. “Leave it on. Need to email round a few things.”

“Right. Night, then.” Adam gives his laptop and the latest relationship crisis from his cousin his full attention, misses momentarily the fact Fergus is still loitering in the doorway behind him, looking characteristically awkward. “About – ”

“Bed,” Adam says in a monotone, not looking up from his screen.

“Yeah, yeah, alright.” A pause. “Cheers.”

Adam sends his cousin a reasonably long reply, flicks through the rest of the day’s communiqués with little interest, half-heartedly channel-hops for twenty minutes before giving up, setting up the sofabed. He sends a look at Fergus’ bedroom door as he sits down on its creaking edge, allows himself a small smile. He’d had his suspicions; Fergus Williams MP had been too fucking squeaky clean, and shit accumulates round politicians like middle-aged divorcees to a winebar. There’s always something they don’t want you to know. Adam had been prepared to deal with anything and everything, from chicken sodomy to twelve Bulgarian love-children; all things considered, this is fucking _nothing_ , especially if he’s intending to keep it quiet.

Adam glances back at the door, tugs his lower lip between his teeth. All things considered, this is pretty fucking interesting, really. 


	2. Chapter 2

The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland announces the election on the sixth of April, to nobody’s fucking surprise. Fergus is still asleep when the story hits the BBC; Adam balances tea and toast on a tray, receives nothing but a baleful look and the start of a garbled thanks as he opens the door and hands it over to him. “PM’s called it,” he says, sitting on the edge of the bed and stealing the topmost slice.

Fergus grunts, puts down his mug. “Let me guess – is it a date in early May?” he deadpans, and Adam grins. He squirms a little, stretches, yawns. “We still good for – ?”

Adam nods, rubs his eyes. “Yeah, no fear.” Westminster’s dead as a fucking doornail with its usual residents dispersed to talk vapid bollocks in their own constituencies for once; the media meanwhile is going fucking rabid for anything to broadcast that isn’t unremarkable shots of Downing Street overlaid with baseless speculation about who’s going to be living there in a month’s time, and given that televised debates are all the rage these days Adam has kindly volunteered Fergus for the long-awaited rematch with Haslemere: a bout of political sparring with rival candidates one, two, and three. Adam throws him a look. “You’re not getting cold – ”

“No,” Fergus interrupts coolly.

He’s propped up against the headboard with his attention on the BlackBerry retrieved from the bedside table; Adam looks at him steadily. “It’s just the last time you were on TV with Haslemere he called you a brainless, blithering communist who wouldn’t be able to run a constituency with a hand up his arse and then threatened to sue you when you tried to chin him,” he says, lightly.

Fergus glowers at him briefly. “Really,” he says dryly. “I’d forgotten.”

Adam swallows a grin, pushes himself off the bed. “Taxi’s on its way. You need to send a quote to Millie on the Sandringham thing while you’re there, and you’re seeing Leslie at noon on Thursday. Christ, I feel like your fucking PA.”

“Tell Susie that, I’m sure she’ll be delighted to go home for the day.” He glances up again, squints at him as realisation dawns. “You’re not coming with me?”

Adam glances back from the doorway, shakes his head. “You’re meant to be doing an interview with the Torygraph this morning, personal piece, you know, favourite flower, what you like to do on Sunday afternoons, where you buy your fucking hideous socks – ”

Fergus stares at him, hilariously affronted. “And you thought yourself qualified to answer on my behalf?”

“Well, short of finding a ginger wig and a Hallowe’en mask, I couldn’t exactly do the fucking televised debate, could I?” Fergus still looks decidedly unconvinced; Adam rolls his eyes. “Look, half the interviews I ever did weren’t actually with fucking whoever. Nobody does these things themselves, especially not the personal ones.”

Leaving Fergus to frown thin air into submission, Adam pointedly eyes up the bedside clock and heads for the kitchen to grab his things; by the time he sticks his head back round the door Fergus has miraculously (but only just) found his way into trousers and a vest and is trying and failing to find the second sleeve on his shirt, and he shoots Adam a panicked look at the sound of a car’s horn from outside. “Christ, that’s not mine, is it?”

Adam bites back a sigh, crosses the room to help him into it. “No, it’s mine. You’re getting the bus.”

Fergus groans, stills to let him fuss. “Oh, _charming_ , another forty-five minute conversation with Mrs. Renfrew from number twenty-three on whether I’ll get the council round to sort out her gnome infestation. How jealous you must be.”

Adam swallows a grin. “She might not be on the bus.”

Fergus shakes his head. “She’s _always_ on the bus,” he says, gloomily.

A second angry blast from the taxi; Adam finishes tying Fergus’ tie. “Just get to the church on time. I’ll be there in a bit.”

“I like begonias,” Fergus calls after him. The last thing Adam sees as he closes the front door is him wrestling fruitlessly with his hair in the mirror.

 

 

 

Adam slips in the back just as they’re wrapping up for lunch; by the fuzzy red look of Haslemere’s expression and the smug grin dominating Fergus’, this morning has been a success on both their parts. He throws a quick look round the room, trying to judge the mood of the crowd, and does a double-take when he spots a familiar face on the other side of the hall.

“Didn’t think I’d find you here,” he murmurs to Angela Heaney as he comes to stand next to her, her eyes on the stage and one perfect eyebrow quirked enigmatically.

She sends him a grin. “We’re constituency-hopping for a few weeks. Thought I’d come say hi.”

He settles back against the wall, trains his eyes frontwards. “How was he?”

“Oily,” Angela replies, her eyes back on the stage and her grin growing steadily. Across the room, Fergus’ eyes light up as Haslemere launches into a vicious diatribe rubbishing the troubles of the local hospital; this is something Fergus actually cares about, and they’ve been prepping it for months. Adam grins hugely, but it breaks off into a scowl at the knowing look he spots Angela slide him.

“Piss off,” he mutters, feeling himself start to turn red. “He’s alright. You know. To work for.”

Angela, gaze back on Fergus, turns her grin feral. “Yeah? That why you’ve got your pulling shirt on?”

“I don’t have a pulling shirt,” he mutters back a touch too loudly, earning himself an angry look from the nearby director; he holds up a hand, mumbles an apology under his breath.

“You do,” she leans in to murmurs back, a few minutes later. “You think it gives you a good waistline.”

 Adam decides, maturely, to ignore her. The host starts to wrap it up; Fergus gives him a quick look licked with relief and Adam swallows back a smile in reply, and instead asks Angela to lunch. Angela, who had leaned down to get her bag and coat, sends him a look of pleased, mild surprise, followed rapidly by a suspicious glance. “Off the record? Or am I just another part of your press campaign?”

Adam looks affronted, spreads his hands. “I wasn’t even going to invite him,” he promises, hand on heart, and then pauses, allows himself a grin. “But now you mention it...” Angela stops gathering her things to smack him on the arm.

 

 

 

Adam is convinced that watching Fergus around women should become a spectator sport. So far he’s managed to awkwardly bring up venereal diseases, bowel problems, underarm hair, and stomach ulcers in twenty-five minutes; his face is almost the same colour as his hair.

Angela, to Adam’s surprise, has rather taken to Fergus, settled back in her chair with a Cheshire-cat grin and flashing Adam the occasional look of mild, amused disbelief. “He’s like a fourteen-year-old trapped in a grown man’s body,” she observes as Fergus heads back to the café counter for a second round of coffees.

Adam throws her a look, casually shredding a napkin. “Be nice. I promise he’s not a total moron. Usually,” he adds, to preserve his reputation; Angela looks decidedly unconvinced.

“You finish each others’ sentences, you know that?” she says, slyly, eyes on her phone.

He throws a handful of coffee-stained confetti at her amiably. “How’s Westminster been?” he asks, tries not to sound wistful. “I saw your work on the Abbot article by the way – nice job.”

“London’s been lovely,” she answers, throwing him a look that lets him know she hasn’t missed the clumsy flattery, or him changing the subject. “Bet you can’t wait to get back there.”

“Too fucking right,” Adam mutters darkly as Fergus returns, coffees in hand.

“Couldn’t carry three,” Fergus says apologetically, putting one in front of each of them. “Back in a sec.”

Angela throws Adam the latest in a long line of incredulous looks as he hurries back off towards the counter, then chokes back a laugh as he manages to upend half of the last coffee all over himself. “He’s almost as bad as Boris.”

“Difference being on him it’s not an act,” Adam says gloomily, as behind him Fergus attempts desperately to clean up the mess with his jacket sleeve.

Fergus gets a cab home the moment they leave the café, sending Adam fervent, vicious looks that let him know he blames him entirely for the fact there’s coffee stains all over his only decent suit. Adam takes Angela for a stroll along the front, given that she’s kicking her heels til her train at three-thirty; they settle on a bench by the flowerbeds, stare at the gloomy push-pull of the sea. “Do you think you’ve got a chance?” she asks, heels scuffing the tarmac idly, enjoying the breeze.

Adam glances at her, shrugs. “Fergus doesn’t.”

Angela rolls her eyes, sends him a look. “What about you?”

He shrugs again. “I think it was tight last time. And that I’ve run a good campaign.”

“Of course you do,” she says, dryly. A cluster of little old ladies hunched double against the wind and the weight of their shopping send Adam a cheery wave; he lifts a hand in return, looks back at Angela to find her grinning. “Look at you, little local hero. Eastbourne’s own Barry Allen.”

He flips her off. “I’m working for fifteen hundred votes here. I’d change their fucking cat litter if it meant Fergus got in.”

Angela full-on laughs at him before she can force herself not to, sends him an apologetic look over the hand at her mouth. “Jesus, Adam Kenyon, Lib Dem poster boy. Fuck me.”

He attempts to look mildly affronted. “Better than the Tories, isn’t it?”

“I guess.” Something in her voice makes him do a double-take; when she notices him staring she shrugs. “I dunno, I just don’t think I could do what you do. Make up all that crap just to make Fergus Williams sound good.”

“He _really_ isn’t that bad,” Adam counters, but she sends him a flat look; he knows he’s skirting the issue. “It’s not so different to the _Mail_ , really,” he continues, slowly. “Except this time I’m shovelling the shit rather than eating it.”

She shifts a little, shrugs. “Yeah, well.”

Adam looks at her, slow and steady. “You’re thinking of jumping ship.”

Angela glances at him. “Only thinking,” she says, quickly. “It might not – ” She cuts herself off with a shrug. “Not for a bit, anyway. Unlike some people, I don’t have a swathe of redundant politicians nipping at my heels.”

Adam decides valiantly to ignore the jibe. “Well, let me know if you make up your mind. I’ve still got a few favours – might keep you out of the typing pool.”

“Thanks,” she says flatly, eyebrow raised. “I’d keep them for now. You might need them yourself in a month or so’s time.”  She looks down at her watch, lets out a sigh. “I’d better – ”

Adam gets to his feet, gestures back towards town. “I’ll walk with you, it’s not far from the office.”

Angela stands up, hooking her bag over her shoulder. “Only if Eastbourne can spare you for ten whole minutes,” she says, flatly; if Adam weren’t a gentleman he’d hit her.

 

 

 

Election day dawns, dark and sodding miserable, and Adam’s so exhausted he can taste it, a thick, sharp, breeze-block weight sat across his tongue. Fergus is up before him, pottering around pseudo-quietly in the kitchen as Adam lies slumped on the sofabed; when Adam gives up, heaves himself up and out, Fergus is already clad in one of his well-fitting suits and an angry scowl. Adam grants him a wide berth, showers and changes before he risks conversation.

They’ve never planned today, despite everything for the last fourteen months being stamped out on a rigid schedule – fourteen months, he thinks, loitering in the shower in the hope the hot water might drum some sense back into his skull. Fourteen months since _shite night_ and a four a.m. phonecall led to him moving to this fucking hellhole. Christ on a bike. He’s not sure if that feels far too short or far too long.

They end up loitering a few streets from the town centre’s polling station, trying to convince the unwieldy electorate to step inside; Fergus is a total hit with the O.A.P.s, and he wheedles and grins more than a few in the right direction. Adam consequently gets stuck with the few unlucky dwellers of Eastbourne under the age of ninety-five, navigating their ramshackle and ham-fisted flirting attempts in the often vain hope of getting them inside a polling booth.

They break for lunch as the heavens finally open, set up shop in the local, and swap horror stories from the morning over a pub lunch; Adam admits instantly that the voluminous pair of strappy beige knickers Fergus produces, looking harrowed, beats the constant stream of innuendo he’s had to put up with. Fergus abandons him for a fag as the clock strikes two – they’re working on the smoking thing, but if he’s honest Adam thinks it goes down quite well round here. Makes him seem like an actual fucking human being. He comes back twenty minutes later, looking drenched but oddly cheerful. “Haslemere’s nicked our patch.”

Adam eyes up the pitch-black sky, the rain screeching its way across the windowpanes. “What, in this?”

“Yep,” Fergus says happily, leaning past him to order another drink, ruffling the water out of his hair with his hand. “Even if we don’t win the wanker’ll probably get pneumonia. Happy fucking days.”

They pass Haslemere on their way out of the pub, sodden and heading for a swanky black car. He grants them a small nod as they meet; in his defence, he’s never been anything but civil with them, but in the odd, dispassionate way of someone handling a mad aunt at a funeral. Adam can’t say he blames him.

“Arse,” Fergus mutters under his breath, once he’s out of earshot, but there’s a certain lack of conviction in his voice. For someone who’s been pretending since day one that this entire campaign was more about proving a point than winning, he’s looking more than a little rattled; Adam rests his hand fleetingly, reassuringly on his shoulder, gets nothing but a distracted, vaguely curious glance in return.

The seafront’s quiet as they reassume their position, a hint of drizzle still in the air; Adam leans on the rail, stares out blankly at the slopping, grey mess of the sea, Fergus foraging half-heartedly in his bag for more of the all-too-familiar bright yellow leaflets. Adam slides him a look, says nothing. For all that this was never actually about winning, they’ve never discussed what happens if Fergus should lose.

That said, they’ve never discussed exactly what happens if he wins, either.

 

 

 

They stand firm through the throng of commuters, the late-night shoppers, the early birds on the night circuit, but eventually ten p.m. comes and goes. There’s fuss on the news about the timing, about those locked out of their votes, but in their part of the world the local church hall is silent save for the odd scuffle of the press and the eight politicos lined up against the back wall. Adam shoots Fergus a sideways glance, takes in the silence and the tired eyes; he still can’t quite believe this is it. Job done.

They wind up sat in varying tiers around the rolling news as the first few seats begin to be announced, Tories at the front, the no-hopers in odd clusters in the middle, and them at the back, off to one side. Colin, the scruffy-haired, kindly-faced clergyman who’s been overseeing the counting, sidles over to them with a smile at quarter to midnight. “I’m told we’re nearly there,” he promises, handing them each a cup of tea. Adam had helped put up some bookshelves for the Sunday Schools a few months back, and had ended up going for dinner with Colin and his wife; he notes quietly that Haslemere’s lot get no such kindness, and tries to hide a smile against their supposedly impartial host.

Once Colin and his worryingly absent smile are gone, Fergus props his elbows on his knees and drops his head in his hands. “Christ, this is fucking awful.”

Adam snorts, swinging absently on his chair. “Yeah, well, too late to hit the panic button and emigrate to the Maldives.” There’s a quiet cheer from across the hall; evidently another Tory victory announced. The vitriolic glares they send in Haslemere’s direction are identical. “Want to run through the speech?”

Fergus casts him a gloomy look. “Thought I might rehearse my disappointed smile in the mirror for a bit, you know. Try and pin down the whole gracious loser act.”

“Would’ve thought you’d have got enough practice at that by now,” Adam says dryly, and Fergus kicks at him half-heartedly.

As the clock strikes half one, the mood in the room snaps sharply; across the hall, a frenzied bout of whispering has broken out amongst Haslemere’s lot, and Adam realises that the counting team is shuffling in with the look of a job well done. Fergus, white as a sheet and tinted vaguely green, is staring up at the slowly-filling stage in horror. “Oh fucking Christ, this is it, isn’t it?”

Adam hooks a hand round Fergus’ arm, hauls him to his feet. “Get up there,” he mutters, flashing the assembled room a brief smile. “And try not to act like a total twat for once in your life.”  

Adam watches him go, his heart suddenly lodged in his throat; across the room, Haslemere makes a snide remark to his team as he gets to his feet, and they all look so fucking _smug_ Adam decides he can’t promise he won’t deck at least one of them if Fergus loses. Fergus has made it to centre stage, swaying slightly and wearing an absent, panicked smile. Haslemere and the no-hopers join him, all standing in a line, all sporting ridiculously large, florid rosettes. The cameras are set up, trained onto the stage; for thirty seconds, Eastbourne has the complete attention of the entire country.

The mayor shuffles into their midst, makes a plea to the room for silence, and peers down with a grouchy, wizened air at the paper in front of him. “Andrews, Alexander Michael, British National Party,” he begins, “nine hundred and thirty-nine. Bletchley, Trevor Neil, United Kingdom Independence Party, one thousand, three hundred and five. Haslemere, Reginald Tarquin Thaddeus Albright, Conservative Party, twenty-one thousand, two hundred and twenty-three – ”

There’s a brief smattering of applause, and Fergus shoots him a brief, panicked look; Adam can hardly breathe – it could be enough, _could be_ –

“ – Independent, one hundred and one. Richards, Claire Caroline, Independent, seventy-four. Uxbridge, Katie Stephanie, Labour Party, two thousand, four hundred and ninety-seven. Vaughan, Ruth Marjorie, Independent, one thousand, three hundred and twenty-seven.”

Fergus is staring straight at him, a look of total, blind panic assembled on his face. “Williams, Fergus David,” the elderly mayor says, a clear note of relief evident with the finish line in sight. “Liberal Democrats. Twenty-four thousand, six hundred and fifty-eight.”

Adam will later swear – and dig out the BBC footage to prove – that Fergus cycles from sheet white to beet red four times in the following thirty seconds. Eyes still locked on Adam, he staggers slightly as the cheers begin to come – Adam’s half-aware he’s getting thumps on the back, handshakes, congratulations from all sides, the knowledge punching through him in rough, heady, unrelenting waves of relief. On stage, Fergus is shakily grasping at the hands of the mayor, of his rivals, of Haslemere, face contorted in a look of blind shock; someone hands him a microphone, and he starts to stutter his way through a speech Adam first began to draft twelve months ago, late on a Saturday afternoon with no real aim of it ever actually being said.

Adam looks down at the phone in his hand, suddenly alive with missed calls and texts. Fuck. This is a total gamechanger. He needs to get to London, a-s-a-fucking-p.

Fergus finishes to another round of applause, and Adam takes the opportunity to get up on stage, hand on Fergus’ shoulder and mouth at his ear. “I need to get to London,” he yells, but the noise in the room is deafening; Fergus just shoots him a confused look, gestures around dazedly. “Come on,” Adam mutters to the benefit of no one but himself, and drags him off stage, out of a side door and into the corridor beyond. Fergus is still staring at him hopelessly; Adam steers them into the hall’s kitchen with a hand at the small of his back.

The moment they’re through the door Fergus shoves him up against it, starts kissing him frantically, sloppily, one hand at his hip and the other caught in the hair at the nape of Adam’s neck. Adam cants his hips, moans loudly, half from frustration – sweet cunting _Christ_ does the man have timing; three months, three _fucking months_ –

London. Adam spins them, pushes Fergus against the door, and pulls back, panting. “I need to get to London.”

Fergus stares at him. “You’re fucking joking,” he says, breath coming fast and voice so fucking _rough_.

Adam’s thumb makes half-aborted circles where it sits against Fergus’ throat; he can feel him fucking swallow. Fuck it, he thinks, and leans in to kiss him again, briefly and fucking fiercely, and the noise Fergus makes as he pulls back nearly has him on his knees. “Trust me,” he says, trying to ignore Fergus’ bitten-red lips and the scalding-hot hand Fergus still has pressed against his hipbone, the heat from his body bleeding through three layers of clothing. He steps back, legs like jelly, sends Fergus a final, fervently apologetic look and runs for it through the now-unbarred door.

 

 

 

He maintains radio silence with Fergus for the next four and a half hours, spent in a mad, panicked rush bouncing around Westminster and peddling his fucking soul to whichever devil looks most promising; then, just as Big Ben announces loudly the start of the new day and a thin, grey dawn starts to creep over the horizon, Adam pulls out his phone and calls him. Fergus sounds muzzy and dazed when he answers; he apparently actually managed to get some sleep. Wanker, Adam thinks affectionately. _“What?”_

Adam cuts across the thin drizzle of early-morning traffic towards the river. “Good news or bad news?” he asks as down the line Fergus yawns hugely; Adam imagines him half-sprawled in bed, rubbing his eyes, a familiar bleary, disgruntled look on his face.

_“Don’t be a twat, just tell me.”_

“Junior Minister,” Adam replies, grinning, halting in front of the stairs down to Westminster tube.

A moment of total silence. _“Fuck me,”_ Fergus breathes, and Adam, still grinning beatifically, swallows back a joke about making that a promise. _“Which department?”_

The smile falters slightly; Adam tugs his lower lip between his teeth. “Ah.”

 

 

 

For the first time in over a year, Adam falls into a deep, brainless sleep in his own bed, and it is glorious. Given his job and his reputation, he’s spent a long time on this flat, stripping out anything and everything he can afford to lose until it’s the very image of the modern man; all crisp, whitewashed walls, chrome-edged furniture, black leather, teal and brown bedclothes on a frame and mattress perfectly tuned to him. He’s not sure if it’s the day (and night) he’s just had or the fact he’s home, but Adam sleeps like a fucking baby.

He wakes up to seven missed calls from Fergus, half a dozen from a handful of others – Angela, Michael, that twat Trevor from the Treasury. He listens back through the messages long enough to ascertain that Fergus was on a train to London three hours ago, glares despairingly at the double-digit figure the clock provides him with, and staggers into the ensuite shower. Water pressure, he thinks lovingly, tipping his face into the spray. Christ. Civilisation at last.

A quick ring-round tells him Fergus headed for his sprawling suburban semi-detached an hour or so back and hasn’t been seen since; Adam tugs on a shirt and jeans, checks the street outside for journalists, and pauses briefly from sending the next in a series of five fucking million emails to call up a cab to get him over there.

Fergus sends him a look of pure disgust as he opens the door, wearing jeans and a jumper Adam swears is his and wielding a half-globular spatula in one hand. “DoSAC,” he spits over a glare, standing back to let Adam in. “Fucking _DoSAC_. What was it, that or taking out the fucking bins?”

Adam rolls his eyes as he pushes past him. “Just be fucking grateful you got anything, you have no _idea_ what I had to pull last night.”

“Who you had to pull, more like,” Fergus mutters sourly, closing the door behind him. Fergus leads them through to the kitchen-cum-dining room, and Adam takes the opportunity to ogle anything and everything within his reach given that he’s never actually been inside before; if Adam’s flat is the modern man’s then Fergus’ house is the total opposite, all soft furnishings and warm pastels and woods. Very fucking cosy. “Food?”

“No thanks, I’ve had enough of your cooking to last me a fucking lifetime.” He hops up to sit on the marble kitchen counter by the TV blaring out the ubiquitous rolling news, kicking his heels against the cupboard door. “Look at that, sausages and baked beans. What a fucking surprise. I thought as a confirmed member of Her Majesty’s Government you might push the fucking boat out.”

Fergus chooses to ignore him, diverts his attention to not setting fire to his lunch. “Just got off the phone with Mannion.”

Adam lets out an undignified snort, eyes on the latest of the three billion emails he’s received in the last two minutes. “Oh, yeah? How was that?”

Fergus grins at him. “Fucking brilliant. I don’t know if he was more surprised or I was, really. It was like two recovering alcoholics trying to exchange pleasantries at a funeral. I asked him what to expect of the staff there, and he said ‘endemic early-onset Alzheimers and the political equivalent of a sentient yeast infection’.”

“Yeah, well, his lot aren’t much better, to be fucking honest, have you actually met Phil? He’s like Noddy’s sexually repressed, socially inept younger brother. Though hey, at least we’ve shafted Olly fucking Reeder – ” Adam breaks off, closes his eyes, allows himself a moment of bliss at that particular revelation. “Oh Christ, that feels good.”

When he opens them again he’s lost Fergus to the TV; Andrew Marr is standing outside of Number Ten with a worrying hollowness in his eyes. “Your lot are shitting themselves, aren’t they?” Fergus observes, mildly.

“I don’t know why, it’s pretty fucking obvious. If Michael isn’t sucking JB off somewhere in Westminster right now I’ll give up politics for hen-fucking in rural Austria. Has he rung you yet?”

Fergus shakes his head. “Not yet. He’s sulking. Probably still in denial.” He pulls out his phone with one hand, checks the screen, pockets it again. “Not had much of anything, really, other than my mum.”

 Adam hums under his breath, still typing. “Anyway, I figured we’d better come up with something for Monday morning, you know, fluffy manifesto-style bollocks. Free bicycles for the under fours, that sort of thing.”

“Right,” Fergus says evenly, takes the pan he’s tending off the heat, puts down the spatula, turns off the hob. “So, you’re not here – about.”Fergus stops, shoots Adam a slow look, cautious but so fucking _curious_ , and a low heat twines around the base of Adam’s spine.

“No,” Adam replies, slowly, but pockets his phone, slides him a deliberate look.

Fergus moves to stand in front of him, his hands a hot weight on either knee. “Yeah?” Fergus asks, quietly, starts to slide his hands northwards, and Adam feels the muscles in his legs twitch, feels his breath catch in his throat. He’s put them at the worst fucking angle he possibly could have, and when he leans down to meet Fergus halfway his back and legs scream in protest – but Fergus is curling his fingers round the nape of his neck, the deliberate push and pull of his fingers suggesting he’s fully fucking aware of the hot-white heat that it coils down Adam’s spine. Adam shuffles forwards a little on the counter, hooks his legs as tight as he can round Fergus’ waist, his fingers winding through into Fergus’ hair and tugging him further –

Buzzing. Not in the fun way, but actual, real-life buzzing; Fergus pulls back, and Adam groans, rests his cheek against Fergus’ temple, stares down at the phone in Fergus’ hand. “Speak of the devil,” Fergus says, and his voice sounds rough, fucked, his breathing scattered. He coughs to clear it, still shivering slightly, and pushes Adam away, gestures back towards the corridor. “Upstairs, second on the left. Two minutes.”

Which leaves Adam sat on the kitchen counter, breathing hard and staring incredulously at Fergus’ back; he slides down onto the floor, casts a final, disbelieving look in Fergus’ direction (firmly ignored in favour of the underhand grumblings of the leader of his party), and heads for the stairs. Fergus’ room is suspiciously neat, given Adam’s knowledge of how he used to live in Eastbourne; he loiters in the doorway for a while, wondering whether this was Fergus’ plan all along, then decides to bite the bullet and step inside.

The bed’s large, warm oak and a fluffy fucking fleece blanket draped artfully across the lower third, hemmed in on both sides with a shagpile rug Adam toes his shoes off before stepping on from pure instinct. He chews his lip for a minute, tries to decide how best to toe the line between practical and fucking presumptuous –he did direct you to his fucking bedroom, he thinks to himself dryly. It’s probably pretty fucking safe to presume. Adam settles for stripping off the duvet and blanket and folding them neatly on the other side of the room, and by the time he’s finished fussing with those Fergus has taken up residence in the doorway, wearing a shit-eating grin and _still_ talking to Michael.

“No, no, absolutely,” he says into his phone, crossing the room and hooking his free hand deliberately round Adam’s belt. “Could you just – one second? Hang on.” He muffles the phone with his shoulder, mouths briefly along Adam’s jawline. “Why the _fuck_ are you still dressed?”

“Hang up,” Adam mutters back, fingers twitching at Fergus’ sides. “Hang up, or I swear to – ”

“Yeah, yeah.” He pushes him away, puts the phone back up to his ear, shit-eating grin firmly back. “Sorry about that. Yes, obviously I understand – yes.” Adam, torn between smacking Fergus about the head and sinking to his knees, Michael or no Michael, starts on his shirt buttons, and delights in the way Fergus’ eyes fly wide. “No, no, I haven’t spoken – to. Michael, please, I.” Adam reaches the last button just as Fergus’ face floods bright with relief. “No, that’s fine, please, call me back.”

Adam tugs him towards him, kisses him viciously, takes the battery out of Fergus’ phone and drops it on the floor. “I’m going to fucking murder you,” he mutters, mouths at his neck.

Fergus tips his head back, lets out a laugh that’s definitely a borderline giggle, and they briefly become semi-tangled as they get trapped pushing Adam’s shirt off. “I can’t help it if – ” Fergus pulls back to say, but Adam quickly and decisively shuts him up for his own fucking good. Fergus moans a little, and Adam can feel the hum of his throat, the spasm as he swallows the rest of the noise back; Fergus starts to guide them back, losing the last of their clothes en route.

“Yellow sheets,” Adam says as Fergus falls on the bed, looking rumpled but wonderfully unselfconscious, “fucking _yellow_ _sheets_ , are you actually – ”

“Piss off, they’re my mum’s,” Fergus replies, scooting back to let Adam join him, and Adam drops his weight across Fergus’ thighs, scrapes his nails down Fergus’ spine, relishes in the squirming half-gasp he gets as a reward. He takes his own weight for a moment, nudges at Fergus’ knees with his fingertips, and Fergus spreads his legs on autopilot, concentration caught up in biting a small, sharp line along Adam’s collarbone – he only stops, breaks off, moans fucking gorgeously when Adam matches up their hips and slides, a deliberate, snapping movement.

For a moment, Fergus just fucking lies there, head back, mouth slack, hips rising to meet Adam’s, sloppy and hard; then he puts a hand on Adam’s chest to still him, slides the other towards the bedside cabinet, and Adam busies himself by chasing the sweat meandering freely, lazily across Fergus’ chest. “I have to say,” Adam murmurs, following a line up his neck, along his jaw, “this definitely isn’t how I imagined spending election day.”

Fergus drops the condom and lube beside him on the bed, grins at Adam viciously. “Can’t say I agree with you,” he replies roughly, rolls Adam round onto his back, settles between his legs and resumes the slip-slide of their hips; Adam rakes his nails down Fergus’ sides, lets his palms settle as hot, heavy weights against Fergus’ hipbones. “I only hired you to give me more time to find – ” Fergus bites his lip, shudders, lets out a shaky breath. “ – a way to – shag you sideways.” He drops his head down onto Adam’s chest; Adam can feel he’s shaking. “God, _fuck –_ ”

“I know, I know – ”

Adam hooks his fingers round the back of Fergus’ neck, drags him down to an awkward-angled kiss, tight, hot flashes of heat slamming down his spine, building in the base of his gut. Fergus’ hand reappears on his chest, pushing him down onto the bed, and eyes glazed, voice wrecked, he asks, far too fucking earnestly, “can I fuck you?”

Don’t laugh, Adam thinks, furiously – if he laughs now Fergus will never speak to him again. “Yes,” he says, slowly and deliberately, as his fucking moron of an employer frowns down at him with a worryingly concerned look.

Fergus settles back on his haunches, smacks him on the arm. “Alright, alright, just thought I’d check, twat. Move over, then,” he adds, guiding Adam with brief prods of his fingertips, and Adam rolls onto his stomach, tugs a pillow under his chest, and suddenly finds himself feeling very fucking exposed. He can hear the slight shuffle of Fergus’ breath, feel the soft scrape of his fingers down his back, erratic and nonsensical, but he fervently wishes he could still see.

“You’re not pulling a camera on me, are you?” he says, trying to glance back over his shoulder, surprised by the shake of his own voice, and Fergus’ fingers hesitate briefly on his tailbone before following the ladder of his spine back up to the nape of his neck.

“Don’t worry,” Fergus murmurs, and Adam can hear the grin lilting his words. “There’s a reason Michael’s got nothing to blackmail me with.” His fingers reach the bottom of Adam’s back again, disappear, reappear sticky, and Adam hugs the pillow to his chest, wishes he could see his face. Fergus’ fingernails are trailing lightly down the backs of his thighs, cresting over his hips, working back up his spine again, and Adam bites his lip, feels himself shudder. Talk about avoiding the issue. He repeats the same path, once, twice, again, hard-soft, quick-slow, until Adam starts to lose track; by the time Fergus’ fingers skim down to his arse, over but not into, Adam’s thighs are fucking jelly and there’s sweat sliding freely across his skin. “Just checking,” Fergus murmurs smugly, and if Adam weren’t so seriously compromised he’d definitely deck him.

“I hate you,” Adam replies, but it’s rather hampered by the fact that Fergus chooses then to start fucking him with his fingers, and Adam’s virulent statement tapers off into a high whine, merges seamlessly into “oh sweet cunting _Christ_.”

He’s completely taken aback by how practiced Fergus seems to be at this, his fingers moving with an unpredictability that makes Adam choke on the moans climbing from his throat, curl his fingers hard into the pillow under him, the taut arch of his back bowing further, writhing up, back into Fergus crouched above him. Fergus pauses briefly to shift a little, ease up the cramp in his wrist, and Adam grunts under his breath, keeps fucking himself backwards in short, sharp movements; he notices absently, headily the way it makes Fergus’ breath catch. “Christ, look at you,” Fergus says quietly, reverently behind him, voice impossibly raw. “Alright, let’s – c’mon, just a sec.”

Fergus withdraws, settles back on his haunches again, and Adam involuntarily lets out a long, wracked-out moan, heady and dizzy and desperate; then Adam’s brain re-engages, and he concentrates on shuffling his legs further apart, pushing down against the pillow and breathing out as Fergus lines himself up, pushes inside.

For a moment, Adam is only acutely, painfully aware of the hot press of Fergus’ forehead on his back and the sharp ache at the base of his spine, his brain drenched in silver-white static and ears echoing with a high whine. Little facts start to seep back in; the uneven, catching cadence of his breath, the slight, shifting movements of Fergus’ fingers punching the mattress either side of him, and he rolls his hips slightly, hears Fergus garble out a swear, tight and breathless above him.

Fergus slides an arm under him, braces it round his torso and grabs onto his shoulder, starts to move, and Adam can’t fucking breathe, burrows himself down onto the mattress, locks his arms and legs.

It occurs to Adam, not for the first time, that it’s been a very long fucking fourteen months, shitty sleep and no sex and lying awake in the silent flat trying very hard not to think as he slid his hand under the sheets; his whole body feels taut, raw, seconds away from cracking apart. He can’t even pick words out of the nonsense falling from his mouth, joining Fergus’ diatribe of curses and half-successful attempts at blurting out his name, and Adam wishes he could _see_ , finds himself remembering last night, Fergus on stage, the look on his face when he’d learnt that he’d won –

Somehow, from somewhere, Fergus’ fingers find his cock and he comes instantly, hard, sweat-soaked and gasping, collapsed forwards onto the mattress and dimly aware of the crippling embarrassment of reacting like a fourteen-year-old at a school disco. Fergus doesn’t seem to care, sticky fingers gripping tight on Adam’s hips, movements jittery, unpredictable, uneven – then a grunt, and a moan, and he’s a dead weight on Adam’s back, pressed flush to his skin, still shaking.

Adam’s still buried face-down in the mattress as Fergus pulls back, collapses down beside him, his blood buzzing, and he only extracts himself to send Fergus a bleary look of disbelief as the fucker starts full-on giggling next to him. “Are you fucking _laughing_?” he rasps, and this apparently makes matters worse; Fergus only starts to snort harder. Adam reburies himself in the mattress, mutters an indistinct but virulent statement of pure hate, still too fucked-out to manage to get properly angry.

“No, not like that, you tosspot,” he hears Fergus say above him, feels the quick press of Fergus’ mouth on his shoulder, then the mattress rising as Fergus disappears off to who-knows-where as Adam dies quietly of embarrassment. He reappears again a minute and a half later, rolls Adam onto his back and straddles him, a glass of water in one hand and a wet flannel in the other. He downs half the former, puts it on the bedside table, drops the latter on Adam’s chest and leans down to kiss him, slow and lazy; he feels soft, overheated, warm. “Three months,” he says when he sits back, grinning like a lunatic. “You slept on the sofabed in the room next door for _three months_.”

“I hate you,” Adam reiterates on a mutter, finishing with the flannel and propping himself onto his elbows to take advantage of the water.

Fergus ignores him to kiss him again, climbs off and starts picking through the clothes on the floor for something to wear and the remnants of his phone. “Tea?”

Adam nods, rubs his eyes. “Yeah, please. Actually, shower?”

Fergus pauses in the doorway, gestures down the hall in a way Adam reads as _feel free_. “Should be clean towels in the bathroom cupboard.”

Adam takes his second shower of the day, fuzzy but contented, and redresses, finds Fergus predictably at the hob reattending to his lunch and a second, perfectly-warm mug of tea with his name on it. Adam briefly eyes up the tickertape on the rolling news as he gladly takes the mug in hand. “Anything interesting?”

“They’ve confirmed reports of a huddle,” Fergus replies, concentrating on his sausage-flipping.

Adam snorts. “Christ, running a bit behind, aren’t they? Next they’ll be telling us about the fucking Titanic. Hiroshima. The Berlin fucking Wall.”

As usual, Fergus ignores him. “Am I making you something, or are you just going to steal half of mine as per?”

Adam flips him off half-heartedly, eyes on his phone. “Very fucking funny,” he says, then eyes up the pan thoughtfully. “Yeah, go on. Better do a quick ring-round, then we should probably concentrate on coming up with something for you to give Mannion on Monday morning.”

“Mobility scooters for asylum seekers,” Fergus says promptly. “Compulsory hen-farming for the over sixties.”

Adam drops a kiss on his shoulder as he heads for the door, catches a flash of solid warmth and a familiar aftershave. “That’s the spirit.”

 

 

 

“It’s nice to know the power hasn’t changed you,” Adam says, watching Fergus try and fail to clothe himself in a scene reminiscent of many mornings in Eastbourne not so long ago. Fergus flips him off dourly, but still lets Adam fuss, smooth down the wrinkles in his shirt and knot his tie in the double Windsor that’s more complicated than he can manage or be bothered with at this time in the morning.

They’ve got twenty minutes or so til the car arrives to take them through to DoSAC, by which point Adam hopes the ginormous mug of coffee and two rashers of bacon waiting in the kitchen downstairs will have done something towards crafting Fergus into a semi-competent human being. Adam himself has been up and dressed for the past forty-five minutes, has moved on to checking both his and Fergus’ phones; he finds four long, wheedling messages from Glenn Cullen of all people waiting for him, skips through to find equally unimportant and uninspiring inquiries into Fergus’ upcoming first day from a plethora of old journalist acquaintances – Geoffrey from _The Guardian_ , Marianne, Angus, Michelle from _Radio Watford_. Christ, the shining world of top-tier politics.

“Anything good?” Fergus asks.

“Go eat your breakfast,” Adam replies, mid-email to Susie, and Fergus passes him with an underhand, petulant glower.

Adam follows him downstairs to find him trying unsuccessfully to simultaneously watch the TV and dish up breakfast. He confiscates the latter in order to avert disaster, steers him into a chair at the table and puts a plate in front of him, takes the seat next to him so they can both keep an eye on the news. Hugh Edwards has locked eyes with the lens and is trying very earnestly to explain what Hung Parliament means to his viewer; Fergus bumps him with his shoulder. “I feel like there’s a joke in there somewhere,” he mutters, grinning. “You know. _Hung_ Parlia – ”

“Yeah, yeah, fucking genius,” Adam replies blandly, gets the feeling they have a very long fucking day ahead, but Fergus keeps on gurning at him, a warm pressure beside him from shoulder to knee.

The clock hits ten to; there’s a sharp horn-blast from the car outside and Adam drags Fergus to his feet, checks him over once more for neatness’ sake. “D’you think any of your lot’ll be outside?”

“Unlikely. Might be a few at the office, though. Try to smile like a normal fucking human being and keep your mouth shut, especially if you wind up in shot with Mannion.”  He steps back, gives him a once-over, nods approval. “Got everything?”

Fergus shoots him a virulent look for fussing, and Adam spreads his hands, looks innocent, decides tactically not to mention that Fergus’d likely forget his own fucking surname if Adam weren’t there to remind him of it. Outside, the driver loudly repeats his disapproval at being made to wait, and they head through to the front door, gathering bags and coats.  “Right,” Fergus says, sounding a bit wobbly and staring dead-eyed at the coloured patterns in the frosted glass.

Adam rolls his eyes, drops a quick kiss at his temple. “Don’t be a twat and you’ll be fine,” he says, handing Fergus his scarf.

He’d aimed at reassuring, but going by the glare Fergus is now wearing he’s fallen a little flat. “That’s your idea of advice, is it?” Fergus says, grumpy but at least a little less hysterical as he ties the scarf in place. “Misquoting _Hot Fuzz_?”

“Yeah, well, I’ve not got much to work with,” Adam replies dryly, and Fergus smacks him on the arm. “Ready, Minister?”

Adam watches fondly as Fergus squares his shoulders, fleetingly assumes a Cheshire-cat grin. “Bring it,” Fergus replies, and Adam, hiding a smile, opens the door.


End file.
